Egypt: America's awkward position

The recent uprising in Egypt has dominated headlines the past few weeks, and as the landscape continually changes in the Middle East, our leaders in Washington are trying to figure out what to do.

I think a pretty clear margin of support demands that Hosni Mubarak leave. But the big question now is: What does this mean for the United States?

Embattled Egyptian president Mubarak has long been a regional ally of the United States and willing to cooperate with things like the Middle East peace process with Israel. The main concern now is what sort of political vacuum this will leave for Egypt with Mubarak’s legitimacy all but nonexistent.

Since 1981 when Mubarak took office, his relationship with the U.S. has been unique. For example, in an interview just a little less than two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her personal friendship with the Egyptian president. She said, “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.”  

In an interview with Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama reaffirmed his strong stance on the issue. The president admitted that “the United States can’t absolutely dictate” what happens, but “what we can do is that we can say the time is now to start making a change in that country.”  

I have to express complete agreement with the president on this point, but his characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood, a political group that supports Islamic sharia law and has a violent past, concerns me to an extent.

He stated in the same interview that the Muslim Brotherhood is just “one faction” but admitted there were “strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S.” I agree with this, but he then frames the crisis as a movement of a majority of Egyptian people who are young moderate Egyptians who just want democracy.

I personally think the administration needs to urge extreme caution in the very near future regarding this matter. This same thinking was what led to the overthrow of the Iranian Shah in 1979 and to the rise of an anti-American regime in Tehran. The Iranian Revolution started out as a youth movement, but then a radical faction that did not necessarily have popular support was able to seize power.

I understand it is difficult and probably not the most popular comparison to make, but a lot of parallels exist in both cases. The uncertainty surrounding the Egyptian uprising creates international speculation. I am not usually this cynical, but there needs to be some serious consideration of the next move by the administration.

I do hope that I am wrong and the president is right in that a safe, peaceful transition of power takes place between Egypt’s next leaders and Mubarak.


E-mail: cjcaudil@indiana.edu